Permission to learn

Conversations in the staff room, with teachers who have immense experience, are a tremendous inspiration. Real live 'case studies' where one gets the chance to interrogate a participant can not only be an addition to one's observation and reflection (as per Kolb's learning cycle), but also prompt one to look at another field in a different light.

A colleague who had to deal with very disruptive students noted that no matter how well he established a relationship with them, he didn't achieve anything until he was granted 'permission to teach'. How to gain this permission then. Wlodowski (1985) suggests that motivating students to learn is a combination of desire for success, volition (choice), value (valence) and enjoyment. The teacher who is to achieve this demonstrates expertise, empathy, enthusiasm and clarity. Amongst the detail of this good practice, two points stand out for me: continuously considering the learners' perspectives as part of the empathic approach and providing a clear way to comprehend what has been taught (clarity) when it has not been initially clear.

The former seems to suggest that planning a session cannot be too rigid - the students were not able to provide input other than the teacher's experience of their likely reactions, after all. The latter ties in with this week's PGCE session on assessment. Exploring assessment and academic research on the subject is something of a minefield: Murphy (1996) is clear that teacher assessment appears to enhance understanding but Broadfoot (1996) suggests that organisational assessment may not provide such benefits.

Broadfoot, P. (1996). Educational assessment: the myth of measurement. In Peter Woods (Ed), Contempory issues in teaching and learning. London: Routledge.
Murphy, P. (1996). Integrating learning and assessment. In Peter Woods (Ed), Contempory issues in teaching and learning. London: Routledge.
Wlodowski, R.J. (1985). Enchancing Adult Motivation to Learn. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Different views

I enjoyed the PGCE session on schemes of work today, largely because I had the chance to get my sub-group to re-design a scheme of work I'd designed. It really was a great improvement. I hadn't thought of getting students to present what they know at the start of a course, then using that to refer back to as a case study.

It certainly demonstrates that input - even from non-subject specialists - is going to improve an SoW. I'm not sure I'd like that to happen with session plans though (too personal)!

Busy week

It has been a busy week, with a microteaching assessment and first PGCE observation.

The former was fine and the latter really helpful. The main feed back related to the teaching of international students. Because of the language barrier, we do tend to teach in in 'factoid' type way, and do not explore the subject and allow free reign as we would do with native speakers. But surely our international students have a 'right' to move through the phases of Bloom's taxonomy rather than being taught to pass exams.

This has been niggling me for a while, but I hadn't been able to put my finger on the problem. The goods news is that over a one year course it should be possible to change my role from 'priest mediator' to facilitator. However, the timing and mechanism isn't clear to me yet. Perhaps the first step is to consider the session plans for the second (of four) module and change their format. I'll be working on these next weekend so I will give it some more thought.

Back into the routine

Post half-term there is always a measure of re-organisation at my school as students are moved to classes that better suit their abilities. We also have quite a few students returning from extended periods of sickness.

This has left me with quite a few students who need to catch up quickly (our courses are pretty intensive) but arrive a little shell shocked.

I can collect old handouts for these students (particularly those who have been sick) and let them have them, but this doesn't seem enough. I've also been asking new students to us the associated text book and complete the end of chapter 'exam' questions for me to review. But it really doesn't seem enough. I must try to make sure I have time at the end of the year to cover topics again so I'm going to review my scheme of works to take this into account. And look for other ideas.